Thanks for the comments I received.
So in summary, Apache Spark itself doesn't directly manage materialized
views,(MV) but it can work with them through integration with the
underlying data storage systems like Hive or through iceberg. I believe
databricks through unity catalog support MVs as wel
I do not think the issue is with DROP MATERIALIZED VIEW only, but also with
CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW, because neither is supported in Spark. I guess
you must have created the view from Hive and are trying to drop it from
Spark and that is why you are running to the issue with DROP first.
There is
An issue I encountered while working with Materialized Views in Spark SQL.
It appears that there is an inconsistency between the behavior of
Materialized Views in Spark SQL and Hive.
When attempting to execute a statement like DROP MATERIALIZED VIEW IF
EXISTS test.mv in Spark SQL, I encountered a